Calling All Blues Bands: This year's TBS Talent Search will take place at Nathan Phillips Square on August 14th from 12-2pm. The Toronto Blues Society invites Canadian blues acts who have not made a nationally distributed or major label recording to enter the Toronto Blues Society Talent Search.

Now in its thirteenth year, this event has proved a launching pad for outstanding emerging talent - previous winners include JUNO and Maple Blues Award nominee the Rockin' Highliners, New Artist of the Year nominees Jake and the Blue Midnights, and Canadian Aboriginal Music Awards winners, the Ronnie Douglas Blues Band, CBC/Galaxie Rising Star David Rotundo, and Maple Blues Award nominees Wickens-Knight.

For the 2008 edition, a screening panel will choose six acts, each of whom will perform one live showcase set in the finals. The winning act will receive a professional development package including a performance at the Southside Shuffle in September, a showcase at the Blues Summit in January 2009, and studio time at Euphonic Sound in Toronto. More prizes to be announced soon!

To enter send a cassette or CD with three songs (material must have been recorded within the past two years.) Make sure the recording is clearly labeled, and include a bio (200 words max), photo and contact information, including mailing address and phone number. Enclose entry fee of $15 (cheques payable to the Toronto Blues Society. Please don’t send cash), and mail to: Toronto Blues Society Talent Search, 910 Queen St. W., Suite B04, Toronto, ON M6J 1G6. For further information contact the Toronto Blues Society at (416) 538-3885 or e-mail info@torontobluessociety.com.

More Radio Blues: As reported in the previous MapleBlues, CKLN’s blues flagship show, Lowdown 2 Uptown has been rolling along without anyone at the helm. Long-time host David Barnard (Dr. Feelgood) is still locked out without explanation and co-host Julie “Blues Doctor” Hill was away on a lengthy overseas trip. Julie was back at the controls on June 18 with guest host Terry Gillespie, but with her expressed hopes, and those of numerous blues fans and musicians, that Dr Feelgood will be back on the air in short order. If you’d like to lend your voice, send an email to stationmanager@ckln.fm.

And it may have escaped the notice of the hard-core blues listeners, but the Bill King, musical director of the Beaches Jazz Festival and a great friend of the local blues community (and a serious blues shouter himself with Saturday Night Fish Fry) is off the air. His radio show on Jazz.fm, Jazz Preview, disappeared in the blink of an eye. As they say in radio-land, “stay tuned”.

Meanwhile, two pioneers of blues radio in Toronto are back on the air. Dave Booth (aka Daddy Cool) has found a home at the newly launched Whistle Radio at CIWS 102.7FM (available online at www.whistleradio.com). Dave’s JukeBox will air Saturdays from 1:00-3:00pm featuring everything from old time rockabilly, blues, and country. It will follow Howdy Neighbour Howdy hosted by MapleBlues contributor Gary Tate at noon.

And, this just in, the “man with the blue heart,” Eddy B is back on the air with his show Eddy’s Place, Sundays at 6pm on CKLN (88.1FM, www.ckln.fm). The outspoken, sometimes controversial, “bad boy of the blues,” brings his vast collection and deep knowledge of the blues back to the airwaves. Both Dave and Eddy had already achieved international stature in their radio days and now that both can be heard all over the planet via the web, the global blues community has been enriched.

Chicago’s comes to Scarborough: There is a new Chicago’s Diner, bearing the same name as the popular blues destination in Toronto for many years. This one is in Scarborough at Sheppard Ave & Brimley. Dylan Wickens will be hosting a jam there every Tuesday and we await some more blues programming as soon as the paint dries.

A double-slide wedding: Congratulations to Brian Cober, long time host of the Grossman's Sunday jam and his new bride, Dianna Daley who tied the knot last month. Dianna is the sister of Mike Daley who played with the Jeff Healey Band.

Hard Copy: Blues Matters! Issue #43 (May/June) of this British publication is at better newsstands now and it contains lots of items of Canadian interest. Downchild is featured, with an interview with Donnie Walsh and a sidebar on the Maple Blues Awards. The young Kitchener Waterloo guitarist Alex Tintinalli also gets a lengthy feature. Electro-Fi recording artist Fruteland Jackson is profiled and there are lots of CD reviews, including Shakura S’Aida, Hamilton native Guitar Mikey, Wild T & The Spirit, Steve Dawson, B.C. Read, Jeff Healey & Ricky Paquette.

- Brian Blain, John Valenteyn

Tate's Vintage Gallery

Here is another in our ongoing series of revealing portraits of relatively obscure artists who dared to be different written by Blues aficionado and reporter Gary Tate. Gary welcomes your comments at gmtgt@yahoo.com.

Guitar Slim: He was born Eddie Jones in Greenwood MS in 1926, and crammed some intensely powerful music into a life cut short by hard living. Many regard his true legacy as the most compelling performer to ever venture onto a stage.

After Guitar Slim came along, things got really wild! He loved to wear outlandishly colored suits with matching shoes and co-ordinated hair. Occasionally he ventured out into traffic---trailed by his 350-foot guitar cord.

Heavily influenced by slide legend Robert Nighthawk, other linchpins included T-Bone Walker and Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown. After perfecting his act, Slim moved to New Orleans in 1950 and began exploring newer guitar sounds featuring lots of distortion---a decade before Hendrix took up the task.

Slim signed with Specialty Records in 1953, and had a massive hit with “The Things I Used To Do”, followed by “The Story Of My Life”, “Sufferin’ Mind”. “I Done Got Over It”, “Letter To My Girlfriend (aka Prison Blues)”, and “Certainly All”. On Atco, he charted with “It Hurts To Love Someone” and “Down Through The Years”.

By the late fifties, Slim’s full-fisted lifestyle was inflicting a dreadful toll. Earl King recalled how he was drinking “a pint of gin and chasing it with a fifth of black port every day.” When Guitar Slim passed away in February 1959, those who knew him--like Albert Collins, Chuck Berry, and ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons---placed him on the same level as B.B. King and Ray Charles.

- Gary Tate

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Tate's Vintage Gallery

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